Mass Hookup Ultimate

Steve Holman

Get a Better Handle on Building Your Back—and
Other Bodyparts Too—With the New Motion Transfer Cable Attachment

You want the biggest size gains possible, right? A growth spurt after every workout? Then you’ve got to realize that just cranking out reps isn’t nearly enough; you’ve got to feel the target muscle firing. A lack of feel, or innervation, is the very reason that so many bodybuilders have trouble building gnarly back width and thickness—those muscles are hard to get a handle on during pulling exercises. But getting a better handle on those muscles may just be a matter of, well, getting a better handle, as in a superior cable attachment that can help you generate more force with your lats and midback muscles.

From our tests here at the IRON MAN Training & Research Center, we’ve got to say that the new Motion Transfer Cable Attachment is the ultimate mass hookup for your back (not to mention other bodyparts). Its most important feature is the handles at the ends of the bar. Each handgrip has a patented four-point swivel-and-rotation action. That means as you pull, your hands can move, twist and adjust—they’re not locked in a position that may inhibit target-muscle activation and/or tweak tendons and joints.

For example, you’ve probably tried undergrip pulldowns with a straight bar. At certain points along the stroke, the movement just feels wrong—like at the top, when your shoulders dance out of their sockets (no, that loud clicking noise is not your partner cracking his knuckles). Sure, you get a decent stretch in your lats, but your shoulders, not to mention your wrists and elbows, feel unnaturally stressed near the top of the stroke because your hands are locked in a fully supinated, or curl-grip, position. That’s just not ergonomic—unless you’re Gumby or Stretch Armstrong.

With the Motion Transfer Cable Attachment, however, your hands can rotate to a more natural parallel or near-parallel position at the top so you can generate more pulling power with your lats there, at the max-force point of the exercise. (If you’ve been following the X-Rep muscle-building discussions in IM and at www.X-Rep.com, you know that the max-force point near the top of the stroke is where maximum fiber recruitment occurs due to optimal fiber alignment in the target muscle. If you’re after extreme growth, it’s critical to generate maximum force there.) It simply makes every pulldown or cable-row variation more effective, from top to bottom.

Swiveling handgrip construction is only one of the big benefits of this new ultimate cable bar. It’s also adjustable. Its ingenious bar-inside-bar design—kind of the way a telescope collapses—and locking pins allow you to adjust the bar to three different widths. That means you can get rid of a whole load of pulldown bars, from parallel wide-grip handles to straight bars to narrow-grip handles. (At the ITRC we’ve already uncluttered the pulldown area by ditching about five cable attachments thanks to the Motion Transfer bar.) The three-position-grip option is a real plus for home gyms or commercial gyms that need the most functionality possible from every piece of equipment.

And you’ve got to love the way the bar is arced. That bend, along with the swivel handles, enables you to pull down or back further for a better lat contraction. The arc also provides an interesting angle for pushdowns if you want to try them with your hands on top of the bar—something between a straight bar (palms down) and a rope (palms facing). Of course, you can also do pushdowns gripping the swiveling handles for another unique triceps torcher, and the bar architecture enables you to move your hands back past the plane of your torso. Now, that’s a cramping contraction!

As you can see, the Motion Transfer Cable Attachment is much more than just a back blaster. The swivel handles make it a unique cable attachment for doing pushdowns, as described above, as well as upright rows—narrow, medium or wide grip—curls, reverse curls, front raises, shrugs and various ab and forearm exercises. And, of course, for your back you can do all types of pulldowns and cable rows with three different grip widths.

Our hats are off to inventor David De Jesus. We thought that, as far as cable attachments were concerned, it had all been done. Wrong! He combined a multitude of ideas into one rugged, functional device that’s the best equipment innovation we’ve seen in ages.

If you’re looking to get a better handle on blasting your back, as well as a lot of other bodyparts, hook up with the new Motion Transfer Cable Attachment. It will set your hypertrophy into hyper motion.

Editor’s note: The Motion Transfer Cable Attachment retails for $139.95, but you can get it for a limited time at a special IM Research Team price of only $99.95 plus shipping and handling from Home Gym Warehouse (you save almost $40!). Call (800) 447-0008, or visit www.Home-Gym.com.